


revelations of the star

by bewitchingwind



Series: illusions of the moon [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Mental Health Issues, Trans Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 13:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15752436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bewitchingwind/pseuds/bewitchingwind
Summary: the moon is still always with him. someone else still is too. r/s set just after poa in grimmauld place.





	revelations of the star

**Author's Note:**

> >>REVELATIONS OF THE STAR<<
> 
> contains references to trauma, self-harm, suicide, mental illness, dysphoria, and character death, again, and i guess menstruation?? in this story too, remus is mentally ill and trans. it's...pretty bleak.
> 
> for some reason, i started writing this weird thing a few days after writing my previous story. i hadn't thought of this stupid book series in so long, yet all these thoughts and images kept rushing up about so many things. i tried writing out some of the vivid scenes i was imagining the best i could. i'd never read an r/s story besides shoebox project ever when i wrote this, so i can only imagine this idea has been written a thousand times, and i can't actually remember much about the books (i don't think he..goes to grimmauld place yet..) but i never read or write fic, and, it's....what it is.... perhaps i can now close up my strong feelings about lupin's twisted world forever: farewell.
> 
> i included two messy drawings, because i wanted to capture this "powerful eyes from a gross prison runaway face" vision but it's a task beyond my Talents.
> 
> dedicated to a dead child who loved this couple very much.

 

he looks down at him one day, about a week after he begins living in grimmauld place. he didn't want to either. he has to.

 

sirius looks up at him like a shadow through a ghost. his thin face, the hair lank and wraithing his shoulders and chest and arms, and the eyes of eternal dark fire - the very same eyes that have ever beheld him.

 

he looks up with the most pristine, perverse ethereal smile anyone has ever imagined anyone wearing. he's an echo. sirius was always the most pure being. it always used to be cast off him like the holy, lovely purity of a dog or other beast, that cannot tell a lie, the perfect balance between bottomless affection and unbearable savagery.

 

remus leaked across to him all his emotions all this time, the love of a youth and the hatred of an adult and that man absorbed it, kept it all with him behind the bars and lays it all on the table before them now in one flash of his eye - without even realising it or even reading their contents - like a wild predator, with all of nature's wisdom and power folded up in a tiny brain - the conduit of primality. simpler than a baby, ancient as night. remus can't stay away from him, can't go near him, and sirius knows _everything_ , with the wry long slash of his mouth.

 

in the first moment of clarity in his adult life, when he learnt the truth in the shrieking shack as a teacher and sirius returned from the dead, remus clung to him like he was a spirit. there was nothing else to do. they were both brought all the way here for this. but it still makes him shudder - not in a good way - the worst. he was dead to him. he _was_ dead. the man may as well be an angel of hell. remus has grey in his dying thin hair. the foul jetty mass cascading down sirius' head, long as his face, chest, arms, is as alive as a rosebush still in march, black and bleak but _living_. remus thinks there might be otherworldly creatures alive in there. like flowers might grow. it's really quite disgusting.

 

he had _hated_ him forever, feared him, and on the other side of it had been a wretched ghostly child of a love, a restless dead spirit, hidden, impossible to ever get rid of entirely even when burnt up, like ash or a stain. turning it over now, because he's supposed to be able to, equally impossible.

 

the same purity as the moon - only ever one way or the other, cruel or gentle, a murderer or a lover. remus still hates and loves him, not as an object he knows scientifically is really one round, full object, nor contained into one complicated feeling like how other people have things they like and dislike about a dear one. like the light and dark side of the disc of the moon, never united. he feels a long, corrupt shudder all down his long adult body. sirius' unholy grin fades a little. most days, they don't say anything. they didn't say anything all that time and it was still a conversation. remus' side is still the same chant. _why, why, why._

 

 

 

sirius came back as someone who'd lost 12 years, never had them. remus felt all 12 of them happen to him like 12 different knives. that's the space of time between them - they're staring each other down on opposite sides across a vast nightmare sea. sirius' eye is wild and young and full of vengeance for this world and easy excitement in tasting each breath of freedom, in a young bursting world of pain and hope, both beautiful. remus' in the mirror are reflections of stone. mountains and cliffs that endure and endure and endure so that they can be crumbled up and drifted away to some other beach one day. their feelings are a note in a bottle, also drifted there. they can't open it. they're only here because there's too much risk to both of them in leaving this place, yet. too many hate and fear and search for them, though in different intensities, so they're together. but it's not 'together'. it's purgatory.

 

 

 

"how did you live?" sirius asks, the question asking too much. he looks at remus with bright absorbant eyes. he thought he couldn't talk about it, but the years have made remus able to like reciting a funeral hymn or a psalm about a sin. maybe it wouldn't have been possible before being a teacher and learning how to explain things, even the most frightening, like they're just applications in a texbook.

so he says "I don't know" very calmly. he looks up at the ceiling and just tells him what he can. "I woke up in hospital. you must have left the flat door unlocked that night, don't you think? someone was sent to fetch me, and I was in something like a coma I think, for about a week. everyone across the country was still partying, and I was throwing up and there was nothing sharp around me. they wouldn't let me take the transformless potion anymore, you remember, the one I was trying back then? they let me out a few days before the next moon, and they asked, 'do you feel like killing someone?' and I didn't answer, so they wouldn't give me any more. later they discontinued its development. I just transformed after that, in my mum's garage, like when he... like when I was 10." he was supposed to say 'I' even when he was describing a different person, a child who was called remus lupin first. he took a conversational sip of wine. the pain and betrayal of those healers' rejection, just another to add to his new world of reality, had been an experience, in his opinion, to something else he knew, how if his hair grew out too long people at the clinic would think it's because he's a woman after all and his privilege of masculinity would be revoked, and if he'd feel like killing someone _after all his friends died on one night_ it's because he's a killer werewolf after all and his crucial potion is revoked. there are all kinds of medication in this world, and he suffers. he leaves a little left in the glass in case he has to say more, and sirius is looking at him with a hounded look.

 

"I... moony, god, how was it? the time?" he looks plaintively aghast as he always did, curiosity as equally powerful as his regret at asking the question, ever time he's ever asked a question. remus squints at him, feeling a little bored. didn't he have enough time in that cell to develop his powers of imagination? the first sirius used to make silly jokes about that phrase 'the time' since haha, remus had to endure two of them, and when his body occasionally bled out childbearing stuff at the exact same time the moon swelled at the top of its own fell rhythm, the wolf could feel every individual cell of his scarlet-black blood as it drained down the dark creature's fur.

laughing softly, he swirls around the cup. "dreadful." those garage walls were powerful brick and plaster, unfazed by the senior mr lupin's questionable driving skills whenever trying to reverse out, and unfazed by himself time and time again. sirius already knew he didn't go back to either of their flats ever again or collect any more of his things, so he doesn't elaborate on where it happened. the transformations were rendered even more terrible by feeling the presence of his mother, safe inside her locked house sobbing like she used to and listening to him cry out too, and wanting her to listen well. 'my boyfriend was a murderer and I'm his last living victim, are you going to leave me on the street or aren't you' had probably not been the best homecoming of a homeless, unemployed, insane son anyone had ever hoped for, but her eyes still said 'I told you so' deep at the back. mothers know best! she died soon after, and his father vanished after the funeral they couldn't afford to hold beyond the bounds of their back garden. the house, a ghost boy's former tomb, was the only place on earth that had come before sirius, so he stayed there. he just stayed. but the moon always follows no matter how far back you try to go.

 

"but how did you..." _live_ , remus heard, the same question.

"well, I don't know, sirius," he sighs, not a snap, but kind of echoing one. sirius is asking because despite the themes of trauma and pain that illustrate remus' stories, he's still here, right? how come? sirius had a brutal, holy fire burning in his stomach or his very heart through all the years, and he wants to know the chemical make-up of what somehow kept remus going. like it will be a bittersweet fable. but it just wasn't the same. it is true that remus had a dark candle too, but they both know it'll hurt them to hear it, and they're saving it tantalisingly for last, like it comes out every night in drips. "I lived like a muggle. my parents lived in a council estate amongst poor mad muggles on benefits and I just I don't know, fit in. my social worker collected my groceries for me, and I just died alive again and again. I couldn't go anwhere magic where I might hear your name, see your face in old news but it was fine. nobody had to fight anymore. everything was over." if things had gone differently, and he had been gently forced to keep fighting in the first order... considering that half the survivors probably had broken down heads too it might not have been an acceptable sick note, so he likely would have just run into a death eater and begged sweetly for a clean last curse.

 

it was true that he went to any lengths to avoid physical remembrance, to the point where it became something to live for by itself, as if anyone would congratulate him for such a worthless victory. it was ridiculous, like he didn't see sirius' gleaming lustful killer's eyes in the very tiles of the kitchen, or feel the horror of impurity in his own skin.

 

 

sometimes, remus tries to tell him something real. the echo, "how did you live?" happens every day without anyone repeating it. one day he just gets all angry by himself, lying on the cheap second-hand muggle settee they've careened into the pureblood drawing room, back on probably the 3rd day remus got there and which happily sent kreacher upstairs into self-imposed exile. like remus is learning real emotions again backwards, just like sirius, only different ones and at a different pace, and whether sirius is still there awake or not, he says "I had a strange fire too," because sirius was fuelled for all that time, with his shining soul intact, simply by burning the pure glow of a candle called R e v e n g e. remus' fire didn't have that different a name, and he wants him to _know_ the details of it, though he shouldn't, though it's awful and it was incorrect. he's crying a little, his eyes and cheeks hot trying to tell him he was alive all along or how could he have felt so powerfully and he's telling them _shut up_! I wanted to be empty!

 

"I think, I think," he murmurs, sputtering, trying to hold on to this piece of distressing coherency he's been granted for just a moment, 2pm wednesday, "I couldn't leave this world until you did. the only penance would be to out-survive you, or something. penance for being born in the first place. yet sometimes it was like maybe, you were _there waiting for me_ , in the afterlife, since I never saw you again after that night, you died sirius, you _died_. if I died, you'd be there too, there was no escape, you'd follow me anywhere and, get me." words like that, that might have been romantic to someone in another world, or maybe even now if out of context, are rendered even creepier through about 5 different filters with that extra layer of dread. he's already heard _did you still love me?_ and _was there a tiny, tiny part of you that believed in me?_ and other ridiculous, disgusting, brutal, tormenting, unfair questions that sirius asked in the first few days with a laugh and a cry and a shudder and all they've done so far is this just kind of, shuddering on each other without touching, in case the spell of truth would be broken and they'd turn back into pumpkins, or perhaps that something actually _truly_ real would be revealed in ecstatic deathly glory. so none of this feels in any way a ghostly bit of romantic at this point, even as he talks openly about the only """romance""" this man in his thirties recalls, good _god_. "I was living to kill you myself one day, how's that? or so that one day, one beautiful day, you could finally show some mercy and come back and finish the job and I would so, so let you. but you stood at hell's gates! you were _there_ ," he moans, holding his hand to his temple, sick to his stomach. grimmauld place is the afterlife. he only has to relive this _once_ , in this brief purgatory so he'll do it, but by god. sirius wants this to last forever but it just won't. it is so absolutely not meant to work this way.

 

"I hated you, I loved you too," sirius just croons a line from a muggle song, arms behind his head, looking up at the ceiling with disturbed down to the core eyes that meet up with his childish, carefree mouth, which used to know only profane limericks, cool insults and marauder war cries, and are in this confrontation easily overpowered, until he's left faraway and contented, like this is all a shocking lullaby remus created to sing him to sleep with. sirius' hands shake violently from where remus can see them resting behind his ears. 'sleep, crosswords, songs' was the first thing he described his dozen score of years in torturous wizard prison with, just to cheer remus up back when he actually asked questions too. sirius' hands stop shaking and come to rest. that utter bastard.

 

 

 

they live like hermits with a secret, sirius keeping remus' heart alive by desperate gasps, remus keeping sirius' body alive with house work. all the ways he managed to learn to drag around his worthless old flesh prison feels like it was practice for now, and thank god he didn't know it then. he probably somehow did. sirius has absolutely no idea how to usefully cook, clean or pay bills, but he didn't really at age 19 either, he just looked pretty while doing it, so in that there's no difference. he also doesn't know how to eat hot food safely, wash himself with soap, not think remus is a dementor and hiss blackly when they meet in the hallway in the middle of the night, or just anything, anything at all. remus wants to cut his wretched long hair but he can't touch him.

 

sirius learns not as a child learns to take care of itself, with gradual obedience, but backwards, with needless revelry. he's not a fool - he learnt after the first day that this is not an experience remus can understand, so it's just like a jangled entertainment at the side of his eye, every time he pushes the handle for the toilet and it flushes, every time he opens the window and a gust of fresh wind blows in and blesses them.

 

they both know this will have to end soon. that his pity for remus will be overpassed in time, surely by the end of summer, by his pity for himself, if he had to return here permanently. right now it's marginally better than soul destruction prison world, but it's a place that kills him by lengths, still stinking of the recently truly dead, and it would be better to run around as a dog somewhere watching over harry, and there's the hint of new trouble in the wizarding world brewing, and it's just they simply don't have any other homes, and is this ok...? but for now, remus lives in a sick fascination with it, how someone can be born again, but gladly.

 

he catches him one day at about 4am, since they have no need for keeping social hours (did they used to live like this once? did they try, once?) in the kitchen, in his new night clothes, a haggard gaunt giant teenage ghost in gryffindor-coloured flannel, with a bowl of dry cereal in one hand and a carton of milk in the other, staring at the items. remus at the doorframe stares at him.

 

"moony, how do you... how do you make it cereal?" he hasn't looked up at him, his voice with a bit of an unhinged laugh in it.

"what?" remus is still staring. "sirius, you... you just pour the carton. until it covers everything and that's, it." sirius follows his instructions shakily the way a kid does when adults like him tell them they're doing something wrong 10 times a day, obedient calm and abashed. it's a wild moment. if sirius had really laughed, remus would have lost it too for five minutes. instead he just feels really, really weird. sirius eats it cheerfully with a little spoon that was probably an heirloom. remus wants to die.

 

 

sirius stands before him in the 3rd week, a little inebriated, a little sober. he's looking at remus because the light has caught them both, tons of dust particles floating between them in the sunset, and he can see him at full length. remus looks back knowing that he knows everything about his skin so he doesn't have to look. why is the old wretch looking at him? sirius places his fingers above remus' collarbone where there are scars that weren't even there back then, unthinking, his face lost and new. he's a free fledgling, out of the nest at last and with dark wings to overpass the world. "you're still so beautiful," he tells him after a long breathless moment, wearing a wistful glow probably straight out of 7th year. "but you have scars all over your whole body now... probably," and his fingers play with the same whisper, against the top hem of remus' shirt.

"get off," remus snarls, and bats his hand away all claws. "don't touch me." he pushes past him and back into the haunts of the mansion, to the tune of sirius' age-old dark little laugh like _I've lost, haven't I,_ feeling those dangerously familiar eyes on his back the whole way, trained on him like a poisoned arrow all the long years.

 

 

 

he's already revealed, at some point through these weeks, about how in the middle years he would binge on references to sirius black, after spending a solid 6 months being 'good', blocking out and punishing his mind every time he remembered anything, anything at all, and forcing himself through clumsy part-time work in a muggle library putting books in perfect, pristine alphabetical order. there'd be an author called blackman, or a title would be like 'the black heart' or something, and he'd calmly fulfil his duty, return home, apparate directly to diagon alley, and spend his whole week's earnings on daily prophet backlogs or the like. he'd hoard them, sprawl greedily over them at home on the kitchen floor because no-one could stop him, staring hard at each picture, each relevant word until he shook and shook and vomited. suffer, suffer, suffer!

 

what he hasn't revealed is how he'd spend weeks managing to avoid looking at himself basically at all, then without even an apparent prompt, snatch up the thin full-length mirror hidden waiting with a vengeance behind his half-empty closet door, and take off every article of clothing and stare at himself, every, single, bit, at his disgusting, impure body that once knew sirius black. he read in a muggle encylopedia in that same library once, some hopeful bullshit like, every 7 years all your cells are restored and replaced. but it's only been 5 years so far. the non-scarred parts of his skin have the audacity to look pale as snow. he doesn't even need to get the knife. his eyes can do all the work. lay out all his old pinched innocent-looking curves, and you have the beast.

 

 

 

 

"you're still a man, then," sirius says a little gruffly one day, sounding a preteen. is his maturity just going further and further back in time?

"what? I _am_ a man," remus hisses, feeling tense.

"no, I- sorry, that's not what I mean." unlike other people, sirius looks straight at you when he's a little embarrassed. it makes _you_ feel embarrassed. "I just, everything's changed in the world. that's an understatement, but I never knew any men your age. uhh haha, _our_ age. I have no idea what I'm trying to say." remus has no real clue either, but it makes him reflect on the absurd reality of it. indeed, not many of the other order members back then had survived to be this age. their teachers were either ancient, dead, or mysterious capable women. this must be the kind of reality that sirius sees, where he doesn't know what a man ageing is like. remus, who slowly became this disturbing tally of years, even if he died several times to get there or however he thinks of life these days, let professor lupin know when someone gets the right answer, unfortunately felt every recent one happen to him. he sighs heavily.

"most men our age are married, and have young children," he describes softly, like he'd explain how buckbeak would reproduce to someone aged 13.

"I bet men can get married now?" sirius laughs carefree, meaning _to each other_.

"they're talking about it, I believe."

 

 

 

"I see harry and I see them," sirius jets out some other day, and it's like _so we're finally getting to this part_... they'll spend a day just lying on the floor, opposite sides of the room, sirius not saying much, especially not while remus relays old lesson plans in minute detailed order for 50 minutes simply to keep his head together, then the moment they'll try to make some kind of food and consume it this type of thing happens like it was waiting for them on the floor where they always eat. not the black family table, even once. they have _got_ to get out of here. they're not ready for any of this yet. "is that so wrong?" he asks after remus doesn't respond, dwelling over many things, pretty calmly.

 

"it's not wrong," he lies, feeling tired. he already knew sirius was a fool this way and that it could get bad, but he can't help it. in terms of himself, remus sees that little boy as a little boy, but wearing the skin and eyes of the dead, and all year long he indulged on the delicious pity, balm to his gloomy selfish heart. until sirius surfaced, in away it was the firmest year of his life in his paltry 'living' memory. they don't talk more about it yet because they know he can't. but that day might mark the switch when remus' thoughts return to things other than them, and something is lost in that process, but it's better.

 

what a year. sirius begins to make little unimportant jokes about it, asking how things were as an educator, when he had to interact with adults the whole year, and act good. as if that was the main issue, once sirius had escaped. how _did_ he do it? he was already just living at the castle by the time sirius escaped, and there was no time to get out now. he'd sold the house and there was nowhere else to go - so he cried and shook in mcgonagall's office before term time, as she didn't even try to offer him biscuits, just held his hand. that had been exceptionally strange. teachers do not hold your hand. but now _he_ has to be one full-time and she's a co-worker, there's nowhere to go anywhere, anywhere. could dumbledore save him? before anyone else knew, remus knew sirius black was on the way to this place. he didn't debate over whether he was coming back for _him_ or for harry. he just knew he was coming. mcgonagall, who didn't know the whole story about _them_ , tried to awkwardly serve as his kind of therapist, like _he has nothing to do with you_ and _none of us knew how he would turn out and the school's perfectly safe, remus_ and he gorged on her strange, ridiculous and short-sighted kindness until by term began he'd found a terrifying, stable smile like sirius black was just someone creepy from school who had turned out terribly, and he took copious medication and taught kids how to defend themselves over and over again.

 

they don't talk about how he had to share his dinner space with snape, who knew far too many things, had done far too many things, and kept them silently in the hideous, bewitching glint of his black bat's eyes, promise of pain, the day he'd let one or two or three loose and watch the ingredients mutate. remus actually understood snape's nature a little better, them both being rather miserable men with brutal resentments on this world, yet there was something rather fundamental separating them all the same. it wasn't his place to question what snape was, so he didn't, as he no longer reflected over the line between 'good' and 'evil'. it just didn't matter. snape had never personally killed his friends, so remus had nothing to say about him. but it was fine, really. it was his best time, as he had a purpose pulling his strings, and probably the best he'll ever have. and there _had_ been wolfsbane, and harry. he was able to thoroughly pretend that he'd never heard of sirius black, with a dead empty smile and his hand on his wand.

 

every day was a fight. sirius barked and barked his laugh when remus felt able to relay the stories like, being presented with the map of all things. "I had to pretend I'd never seen it before in my life, in front of _snape_ ," he described hungrily, soaking up sirius' reaction, feeling off the rails.

"and did it...?"

"exquisitely," he said with a gristly laugh, remembering what it felt like to read the like of _padfoot would like to say...._ from a piece of paper. as if he hadn't been holding back a panic attack. as if he hadn't had it later. how when he confiscated it, he stared over it every night, looking with horror for _sirius black, sirius black_ feeling him here already, in every turn of the corridor and grounds where he remembered like the last strains of someone else's nightmare, that _this_ was where james orchestrated that big prank one time, and _this_ was where he and sirius had had their first kiss. remember? remember? the end seemed very, very near. he was here to close it up. he was really going to. the first mention of the name _peter_ had been the beginning of the unravelling. there were whispers around every pillar, _You're getting closer to the truth...._ and he knew he had returned here for the most important moment of his life - since the last ones - and he had no idea what it was going to be. he had wandered of his own free will back into the crypt of time. remus wandered the halls every night like a demon, looking for something he'd left there.

 

 

 

his progress, to the point where he could think it was a reasonable idea to try to go and teach _there_ , would have shocked his 24 or 25 or 26 year old self into idiocy. that was why he could bear it, because it was a dreary triumph, over something, he didn't quite know. perhaps it was only because one day, he woke up many years after the fact and realised that the only potter left was actually still alive somewhere. or that he had to go _there_ and see something through - something unknowable. the final duty.

 

he felt a great guilt, which was something strong, and he had been working in another part-time position as a librarian/assistant teacher at a muggle school, and like a prophecy dumbledore contacted him. he had been reminded that _your knowledge of dark creatures of all kinds can let you warn others about them_ and _you owe it to children like him_ , who have lost something immeasurably precious too. had he just called up the person whose heart he imagined might be darkest? what was he thinking? but it was something remus had never considered until his thirties - it's true, he _knows_ , and has never been able to tell anyone about it, because it was a sin, and he could communicate it in another way to children, and bless them. he lived on that persuasive testimony like fuel, and because he was still pretty unstable, for a time he imagined harry as literally representing himself. an empty preteen child with secrets in him - but more than that, an association of twisted love and pain to people inaccessible, forever. _I have to tell him everything, as a warning_.

 

of course, he learnt soon that neither harry, nor really any child, is empty. some say their minds are full of fluff, but they are so, so full. he realised he likes children. he _loves_ children. he realised he had been kept alive all this time to do this. it's still a penance. but while it was difficult to perform a penance for himself, who is irretrievably wrecked, he can do it for the sake of other tiny things half destroyed. it turned out to be predictably rewarding, because theirs was a progress all the way up like trees that weren't even rotten, and he was glad to be there. he began to feel that he had suffered exactly to become a suitable conduit for guiding others away from the dark paths. he became a finely-honed weapon.

 

he knew exactly which ones had bad parents and which had good, which ones were probably gay and trans, and he taught them all the same. the details, but also the same basic important principles of safety which could guide them through all sorts of experiences... if he taught them well, they would never get lost and tricked right to their black hearts like he did. so he couldn't run away. it was wonderful how they barely knew anything about him back. as children usually see teachers, he was transformed into a part of the school, like a pillar or a statue of armour, that's seen it all and back and therefore is comforting scenery to them. to be fair, it's difficult to remember the details of each child, now that he's seen nobody but sirius for weeks, but there had been the one very sharp one. she had worked out nearly everything. she had been a threat. she reminded him a lot of lily. muggleborn girls are extremely powerful.

 

he thinks of children almost all the time now, in in the purest, gentlest way a _werewolf_ ever has. I can protect these ones, he thought then, and sometimes he would look at harry and remember holding him as a miniscule bundle, thinking _I can protect this one_ at that time too, and it hurts, terribly so, but he decided to finally hold onto this one image. he destroyed every other memory, but he'll salvage this one and make it pure again. (he later learnt that there was another one left undisturbed in the recesses of his mind, admist the bloody scraps and remains of memory guts). it's because he looked down at that little kid desperate for some of those memories that remus has destroyed, desperate for absolutely anything, enough that _the reason he's alone is because of...!_ stopped defeating him, and his mind didn't just laugh cruelly at him, it formed into homework examples, and he sat down with young master potter from a short distance, smiled distantly at distant things, and taught him how to repel a boggart.... What You Fear Most.

 

 

he saw the grim all that year, too, even before sirius got there. but it wasn't watching over him, it was leading him somewhere. before, he would have fled from it, but he looked at it and thought about how to protect people from it. "i hated it at times," remus describes another day, as they now talk mostly about the past year. sirius is desperate for information about this time and of harry and it's really touching. "I had to think about danger again, all the time, and I, I guess you _know_ how I used to be at age 19, don't you? well anyway, I really hated boggarts, but it had to be done. to show them the face of fear, you have to be there with them. there are a lot of them in old places like that," probably one upstairs, too. he trails away, not really sure if this is right or advisable to talk about because he suddenly sees where it's going.

 

"did you see..." sirius begins like clockwork, and looks faintly horrified at his own implication, trailing off in exactly the same way.

"no," remus says quickly. _though I did think of that at first._ "it was still the moon each time. but it could just as well have been. because I felt like you _were_ the moon, that you, it, and even I were the same thing. it reflected everything. there is just no escape... kind of thing. but harry really shows you some remarkable things. I realised when I saw his that in the end it's not many things all in one image but just concluded, just fear, the fear of fear of fear." back as a youth when it was just anxiety keeping him inside for months, his greatest enemy wasn't the physical threats outside, was it, but what he took back in with him right over the threshold of protective house spells. the enemy then became his own body and all the things that sirius had left with him, when the man himself was, realistically, firmly behind very well guarded (or not) prison bars, in a place far far away.

 

"so you saw his patronus too?" sirius asks avidly, side of his face and chin in his hand, staring gloriously lovely from the patchy second-hand armchair, another muggle bargain (kreacher is probably crying somewhere).

"you guessed it," remus looks away from him, up, distantly, not sadly. "we had sessions about that. I," he began, then halted like a broken window. he remembered something. .... he's _allowed_ to remember, now. sirius looks alarmed, jumping up like he was actually hurt, until remus waves him back down impatiently, looking away, fondly, afraid, thirsty. "it's fine. I'll get to it. well, he finally managed to call one working from some absurd, distant memory of, of his parents, just looking at him or something. that was _it_. what I just thought of is, up until that point I'd only been summoning mine through the motions, not thinking about it because I'm a _teacher_ , I mean I was, just showing him how it's done like an exercise, but I remembered now, I hadn't even realised that _I_ had been thinking of _you_ looking at _me_ just, in that way you would, nothing to say, not even ahh, romantic or anything, just looking at me in some mundane moment of comfortable nothingness. the door's locked, the stove's not left on and everything's just fine in that moment, not perfect, just _fine_. I hated you with fire, and I didn't know the truth yet, and _that_ was my memory to fight a boggart? the moon, which I saw as you as well? and I didn't even know it because if I had, I'd have thrown up. er, there, it wasn't anything important really." hot tears have fallen all down his face again and it was important. sirius looks like he was just now blasted by his patronus and is fine, not banished into a box or a cabinet like the rest, because he wasn't a murderer. _we are so, so stupid_.

 

 

it's been a really long time now, so long that they begin to feel the distant past like a being physically with them, like a pet. though it was threatened to be destroyed, it escaped and hid, waiting, until this moment, and isn't really entirely welcome, but it's there, so they have to look after it now. it's a little like a child itself. kind of like a parent, too. remus really, _really_ thinks about children all the time now. how they were all so different, from such different pasts of pain and joy and trickery. several had parents who had also died or been broken during the war. each one was a strong tiny light. james and lily were _so young_ when they decided about that. it feels impossible, how they could have done it, and been ok with it, during that year they were given with him. he knows sirius thinks about them all the time, because he's _still_ _back there_ and he's so far gone out of his head, to bad places, to really good ones. he knows, so he tries to think about sirius thinking about them, and that doesn't feel so bad. it's the best he can do. it's weird how he can't talk about them with sirius like he could with their son. perhaps that was a precious transient space. oh, sometimes he feels so wild with longing for _something_ , knowing what it is, not knowing....

 

it's like, right now he just takes care of weird stuff in the house, since he is technically qualified in doing a lot of what has to be done. he really needs some help with this one day. there's no order any more since there's no dark lord any more, unless a new one turns up, but this house is turning sirius inside out. it's only because he doesn't _have_ to live here for ever, and there's a terrible risk, and if they live a little longer, remus knows sirius'll go up there once term begins, to watch over, to be - a guardian. he won't be able to stop him and it's the beginning of the end. he doesn't know what he himself will do. he wants to return here, with sirius, one day. he wants harry to be safe. he wants....

 

it's when he thinks about how sirius gets to have a bit of family now, almost like he gets to have a son. but it's not got anything to do with remus. it should be a good thing. his own thoughts have become really disturbing. he looks at him over a comfortable lunch and feels stones settle in his stomach and yet thinks wildly, clearly, unreasonably, _we could run far, far away and I could have his child_. the stones roll. what is he _thinking_? his breath twists like the fumes of hell. but, didn't james and lily have a child so they could kind of be born again, leave something behind? through children, you can leave them with something you never had. you can give them something you lost. the wisdom, without the shame of trauma and horror that brought it to you. if they're born from your direct bodies, it could be like they're you born once more. he wouldn't really ever ever want to do that. but, he _could_ _._ if he wanted to really suffer, it is a Possible Thing, or pretend that it was someone else's and they adopted it... the real thought is, _if sirius dies, I'll have something of his with me, forever_ and it's so disgusting in its unhealthiness, sadness, and enchanting power. better yet, the child would be theirs, but not them, someone else and someone better. the thoughts spiral mercilessly and sicken him and he thinks of his mother's grave and lily's firm hold on her creation and her maternal body's tremulous power and can't finish his soup. he is so, so wretched and worthless. sirius' child would have his burning laughing eyes, with remus' colour. he wants to die.

 

sirius looks at him in peaceful alarm, sunset smile with the gentle, scornful bits in it like he knows exactly what remus is thinking and defies and claims it all. "what are you dwelling about now then?" he doesn't say _dear_ but it's there. his dead prisoner's hair spools all the way down to the table and he's absolutely going to die soon. the ridiculous nightmare fades. remus couldn't even _kiss_ him. the face of the imaginary child disappears.

"I wasn't thinking about _you_ ," he snaps, getting up and fleeing to anywhere else.

 

 

 

// _he still at least gets_ _wolfsbane potion, like it's a scrap t_ _hey give to_ _a stray, and sirius swallows his wild lost fury about that like azkaban taught him, turns it into cells that make his blood go round. he takes him_ _at the moon time_ _to the old haunted woods nearby that_ _sirius_ _used to play with regulus in._ _not so long ago._ _buckbeak lives a little life there for now as_ _he works out_ _what to do with him,_ _fit out a room for him, or_ _where to g_ _o_ _._ _that hippogriff is a_ _wonderful_ _beast._ _when_ _sirius_ _can't play house any more, he'll fly awa_ _y with him._ _he'll fly to heaven._ _sirius_ _tries to feel like remus teaches him_ _to,_ _turning your pain and your bloodlust not just into cells, but into glory. remus doesn't seem to_ _realise_ _that he_ _turned into_ _glory, or a saint._ _sirius_ _takes him to_ _the moon hanging familiar_ _, meeting them there for the ceremony. for when remus turns_ _wolf_ _now, he turns_ alive. _he is always alive, even if they both died already and will die again, but when he turns true he looks at sirius in this_ _one_ _way and they run and howl_ _or curl up and sleep_ _and forget being humans, men who were little boys or little girls ever,_ _or_ _prisoners, sacrifices, ghosts, and remus just can't hid_ _e it anymore._ _he's as much as said it. he_ has _said it. when he turns back, and sirius is_ _holdin_ _g him_ _in pieces in ex-act-ly the same way as ever before, remus touches his hand shaking_ _even though he never touches him at all_ _, cannot_ _at this_ _fated_ _time_ _cover up_ _the pieces_ _he tries to hide, tried to smash, his unannihaliated body, and says_ _these_ things _. it's him, with the_ _wolfsbane_ _it's always him, so sirius listens with all he has. he holds remus' face, as so many times before,_ _his little crinkly handsome face, and remus looks up at him like he's god, lucifer, a phantom._ _he looks_ _willing to absolutely give up the game._ _"purify me,"_ _is what he says_ _, eyes closed, fragile, crying_ _calmly_ _. sirius knows this foolish man is lying at the gates to the afterlife, and he's_ _there_ _with him. "do what you wish with me. I don't care any more. give me it again," and his pale whole body is before hi_ _s hands_ _. the moon strain_ _s_ _to watch. sirius bends down his face, and just only kisses him, the most pure and precious kiss ever, the kind a mother would give a child, a mourner would kiss a grave._ _you've never done anything wron_ _g._ _oh god, lupin. you have all of me and you already.//_

 

 

 

it gets easier. he sits half reclined, half curled on the settee with his head against sirius' shoulder, who is sitting next to him short-haired. in moments like these, in almost-sleep, he still hears the strange whispers he used to. they're the same dark voices, only more tired. there is still, even now, even yet, that terrible premonition in them. a prophecy of darkness. they both know. sirius escaped on borrowed time and is still burning down excitedly and without a hint of restraint the last of his candle of burning life force, once called R e v e n g e and now just called _Life_ , and remus has been wanting to be at the lost end of the great lake since he lost his first sirius. there's not much left of them and they don't have anything much left to give. but it's already here. they don't need anything else. the last reserves of their energy may be just enough to close up that chapter and no more, and would that be enough? couldn't sirius live free one day? will they come back here together? regardless, remus still knows, that sirius is just racing wildly to do something _big_ , one last thing, one last stand, like james and lily did, so that he can fight as he wanted to back at that moment, one last time, by james' side. calling out something like 'nice one!' even as he knows with all his hell body, that he's about to go down, and accepts it. the end approaches. remus seems to finally get why it now, why james did what he did, was glad. it's a foolishness. it's an eternity. remus is broken, but through the cracks he can see sirius burning like this, and its such a warm glow of endless life that at times it doesn't even feel like doom, that flame. cracks he can hide his shy face behind, after he thinks, 'I love you' and it's heard and the flame crackles in delight.

 

he still feels like he's missing just one last thing. just one last answer. at this point, there's nothing much left to tell sirius. oh, he's told it all at this point. he's almost ready to rest. but there's just one thing he feels like he never truly discovered, even though by all measures of reason, he did find out the answer, that moment when sirius told him what had really happened and seized him with his shrunken innocent arms. what was it? what was it? if he just heard it, he'd know what he really wants. he can remember a long forgotten voice. he can remember a long ago touch of pale transparent fingers. a terrible anguish, a bright white vicious light, and sleep, and a crucial message that carried him to the next world, the next day.

 

 

 

I will watch over you. "and one day, you will know the Truth," sirius murmurs carelessly, not thinking, his hand ruffling remus' hair without purpose, like it's the lilt of a song. remus freezes and chokes and looks up at him, demanding, "what did you say? I heard someone, I heard something like that in a dream, once."

"what? I just made it up this moment," sirius laughs, who often indeed says weird things he never used to and just lets them fall. remus looks up trembling into his eyes. sirius looks right back plainly, clearly, right from the back wall of his soul, with the last answer in them. it's the exact same expression, the exact same person, that had seemed so dear once, then sinister twice, then dear again, that used to look up at remus from the few pictures he didn't burn, the ones with eyes that did the burning all by themselves. maybe even now he doesn't fully understand the pure fearless message he's been receiving from sirius black all his life. but he may. he hears the warning bells of the end. finally, he decides to trust it. he gives that message his soul.

 

 

 

*

 

_The moon watches over the last years of the journey, waits patiently for its fated child to make it to the end._

 

_I will watch over you. And one day, you will be at peace._


End file.
